It sure has been a while since we posted an update! While it may seem quiet from the outside, we've been busy as ever, balancing life challenges and game dev, and we're excited to finally share what we've been working on.
Mostly it's been quiet because we decided to focus all our efforts on working on the game, and step back from promotion and updates for a bit. It takes a surprising amount of work to keep up with posts and builds etc, and as a tiny indie team we felt we needed to focus all our energy toward getting the game finished.
Challenging Times
It has also been some pretty dark times lately, in the world, the game industry, and in our personal lives. As most people probably know, the game industry is in a state of crisis with more layoffs and closures every day. We're lucky to be in the home stretch on our game, but even so as freelance work gets hard to come by some team members have had to scale back their involvement on the project.
We've also had some serious health issues and family emergencies in the first half of the year. Everyone is fine, but the thing with tiny teams like ours is that when someone has to step back for a bit, there's no one else to take up the torch and development slows to a crawl. This pushed back our production timelines a bit, but we're back on track (universe willing) to launch by the end of the year. All in all, it's been a rough year so far, but it feels good to be sharing our progress again!
What We've Been Making
But putting aside such gloomy topics, what have we actually been working on? Lots of exciting things!
Campaign Mode
This is the big one! We've been hammering away at this for a while now and it's finally in good enough shape to share. Some of you have seen early demos at PAX Australia or other events, and it's changed shape a many times as we iterated on the design. The goal was to make a mode that leans into the procedural generation, and as it doesn't have to be tightly balanced as the multiplayer, it can get more chaotic and surprising.
The campaign framing is that it acts as a 'prequel' to the standard multiplayer or practice maps. The campaign view is made up of random events and conflicts that slowly escalate in scale as you claim the crowns of the land, culminating in a final war for the throne on a familiar full size map you'll recognize from standard games. Campaign features include:
EVENTS: Use your spies to create and resolve random events, gathering secrets and influence, as you make moves in the shadow war of intrigue.
CONFLICTS: Send units to conflicts started by your claimant on the campaign map. These conflict games are played on zoomed in areas of the main map, and slowly grow in scale as the campaign progresses. These provide a fun chance to see the regions up close, rendered with the updated map generator.
CROWNS: Three neutral factions on the map have yet to declare their loyalty. If you conquer or ally with them, they will pledge their crown to your claimant. If you can meet the conditions and claim the crown, you get one step closer to the throne. Each crown has unique effects on the game, but watch out - your rival can claim them as well. Three crowns claimed, and the final war for the throne begins!
ALLIANCES: If you win a campaign, placing your claimant on the throne, they will form a new royal House which is added as an Alliance to your chronicle to be called upon in future games.
REPLAYABILITY: The core idea behind the campaign was to make something that could be played repeatedly, always offering variety and new challenges. In addition to the random maps, each campaign is a unique combination of events, crowns, factions and more, that combine in new and unpredictable ways. Figuring out the best approach to take in each game is part of the fun.
A Work In Progress
Please note the campaign is very much a work in progress and recommended only for the truly curious. It has the core game loops, but has yet to be balanced, and still has more content to come. We haven't had a chance to add help text or popups, and the UI is very rudimentary in places which can be confusing. For now, consider figuring out how the game works to be part of the challenge! We'll be updating the guidance and UI as soon as possible, but wanted to share what we have so far.
Ranking
Multiplayer has been getting some love as well, as we have added ranking! Playing online matches will affect your rank, progressing through bronze, silver, and gold tiers... all the way to the Shadow Council, a leaderboard of the very best players. At the end of the season, the Shadow Council earn unique titles, and the ranks are reset for a new season.
We also have shorter special events that consist of a simple leaderboard that only counts games played during the duration of the event. These also offer a chance to earn one-off titles.
You can view your current rank and the leaderboards on the titles page of the chronicle.
Player Portraits
You can now generate a mysterious and shadowy portrait for your account! If you have an older account, go to the options menu, and choose account settings to find the portrait generator.
Weather & Sea Routes
We've wanted to include a game mechanic to make sea routes more interesting since the earliest days of the design. The goal being to make them cheap to move along, but with some unpredictability or risk.
The new sea routes now allow any additional units after the first to join the sea move for free. Thematically the idea is they share the same boat. Good for moving big armies!
However, sea routes now have a chance of storms which block soldiers from traveling that route until it clears. The number of clouds on the storm icon indicates how long it will last. Red tempest icons will even cut supply on that route for one turn, often breaking up large armies or sieges.
Spies aren't concerned by weather, and still happily sail through even the worst storms.
This makes sea routes excellent for moving large armies, but they can also risk getting cut off or having fragile supply chains broken.
We'd love to hear your feedback on these new mechanics! (And once again, these features are waiting on more UI to clearly communicate what's happening).
Alliances
The alliances that you earned by winning campaigns can be called upon when starting a standard game. A selection of the alliances in your chronicle are offered, and if you choose one it upgrades one starting unit to a captain of that House with the associated boon. But be warned, captains are fickle and will come with an unknown bane as well.
Players are also always offered the chance to take a random mercenary captain, so don't feel left out if you haven't unlocked any alliances yet!
Memory Performance
A much more mundane, but very challenging task has been making the game more performant and handle its memory allocations better. Hopefully it will run much more reliably now, especially on low-end machines or during long sessions. Still some work to do on this front, but it's leagues ahead of where it was last update.
New Demo & Next Fest
We've pushed this new demo with all the above and more, in time for the Steam Next Fest! Exciting times, as we start building up momentum again in the lead up to launch.
Demo Limits Reset
Updating the demo will reset all game limits, so even if you had previously maxed out the available matches you can try out the new build with another round of games. A fresh start for everyone!
Next Fest Tourney
We've kicked off a special leaderboard event for the duration of Next Fest, as a little celebration and test run of the new ranking systems. Play some games over the next week and see how you do!
Discord Community
As always, if you're interested in the game and want to discuss strategy, find games, suggest features or ask how the heck something works, come hang out in our Discord! We have a lovely community, and are always happy to see new faces. Come say hello!